Last Sunday millions of people around the world where stunned when the news broke that Tony Scott, big time Hollywood director and younger brother of Ridley Scott, had committed suicide for reasons yet to be explained. You can read Empress Eve’s wonderful obituary of the late filmmaker here. Although Scott’s movies were never granted the often unfettered adulation critics and cinéastes willingly gave his brother, he was responsible for some of the coolest and most popular modern Hollywood action films. After scoring two back-to-back blockbusters with Top Gun and Beverly Hills Cop II, Scott started to make the more interesting movies that would come to define his later years as a director. Some of them were smash hits, but rarely scaled the heights as his earlier career-making successes, and several of them were box office flops that later found new life on home video and cable.

Submitted for your approval are the five films I believe in my heart of hearts to be the essentials of Tony Scott’s unusual but beloved and rewarding filmography. If your knowledge of the man’s work doesn’t extend beyond his ability to make Tom Cruise look good in the cockpit of a fighter jet and the front seat of a battered stock car then you might find this list worth a read.